The Time of Angels

May 01, 2010

Yes, yes. Witty script. Brilliant direction. Remarkably assured performances by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the first scenes recorded for the series. The return of the most beloved and feared monster created for the BBC Wales production of Doctor Who. An excellent performance by guest star Alex Kingston. It doesn’t go too fast, and it doesn’t go too slow. It involves some excellent scenes of exploration while the menace is allowed to build and build to a tense and thrilling cliffhanger.

All in all, it’s probably the strongest “part one” since Human Nature. In fact, it's everything a Doctor Who story ought to be. Yawn.

Who cares? It’s like flying using the blue boringers. Like landing the TARDIS without the wheezing-groaning sound. A ship shouldn’t run this smoothly. Real boats rock! There needs to be something in there to rile up the fans. To get the press talking. The reference to the TARDIS’s brakes isn’t going to cut it. Sure, it violates decades of canon, and under ordinary circumstances it’s the kind of thing that fans will grump about, but that moment is too damn delightful to really upset them. There has to be something that can be done to this episode to engender controversy. If only there was a way we could take that cliffhanger and... I don't know. Do something to make it seem less tense.

It's everything a Doctor Who story ought to be. Yawn.

Okay, I kid. The animated Graham Norton thing wasn’t some sort of conspiracy, nor did it even detract from the episode for those, like myself, who watched the BBC HD version. It’s really just a tragic coincidence that the one episode that got saddled with the black mark that fans will remember for the rest of their lives and write about in reference books was the best episode so far this series, beating even the phenomenal The Eleventh Hour. I can barely find fault with this episode at all.

It doesn't take long to run out of ways to say that Matt Smith and Karen Gillan are a joy to behold. The fact that this was the first episode recorded matters not one iota, because each of them is entirely on the ball. I mentioned in my review of the second part of The End of Time that David Tennant is the Doctor for me, but in a very real sense that is no longer the case. I still love David, but now when I talk about who the Doctor is and what he is like, images of Smith pop up into my mind, not Tennant. It took Tennant 'til Doomsday to fully displace Eccleston. Smith is already there and just keeps adding loads more unnecessary proof. Meanwhile, Karen has a brilliant moment facing down the Angel, and I can’t wait to see her take center stage, as next episode’s trailer indicates she might.

Bringing back the Weeping Angels must have been tricky, as their modus operandi was specifically tailored to the plot of Blink. That episode works like an intricately-constructed (and not at all wibbly-wobbly) puzzle box. Removing the angels and placing them in another context was by no means a guarantee for success. For the Angels to work outside of their original context, they had to be fleshed out a bit, and I worried that this would ruin what made them great. I needn’t have, of course. There are four new elements here: first, the image of the angel. This is marvelously postmodern-creepy and while it might sound a bit implausible it’s actually quite a feasible extension of the rules of the quantum-lock established in Blink. I mustn’t have been the only one wondering what would have happened if the Angels were viewed through CCTV. Moff's answer was brilliant. The second new element is also an extension of what we already saw in Blink: any statue could be an angel, taking the cue from that episode's closing montage of statues looking at one another.

The third (and admittedly weakest) development is the ability for the Angels to take on the voice of the dead. It feels a bit to samey to the Forest of the Dead, and it does detract a bit from the menace of the angels by providing an opportunity for them to be reasoned with. Still, by preserving not only the voice but also the personality of Sacred Bob, the Angels are still held at a distance, unlike the Vashta Nerada which addressed the Doctor in a way a mite too personal for me.

Oh, and of course, the fourth development is new to Moffat as well as the Angels: now they kill. This seems an odd choice: the angels are built for timey-wimey, and this story involves timey-wimey as well and so it’s a little disappointing not to see them “kill nicely” in this episode. Even so, their new tactics seem to serve a purpose, and there’s more to come, so this may be justified yet.

Moffat would do well to keep the Smiths around.

And speaking of timey-wimey, River is great in this episode. Her character seems more fun and adventurous than the older version we saw in Silence in the Library, and this softens some of the more annoying awestruck elements of her character in that story. Moffat does a great job of developing River Song as a mystery. Instead of getting answers about her, we’re getting newer, more interesting questions. I wonder whether Moffat has a strictly defined arc for her during his era, or whether she’s his Captain Jack, a recurring companion. Either way, she works great in this episode, but I have a feeling that we’ll have a new perspective on her role here after what we see next week.

But perhaps more important than the return of the Weeping Angels and River Song is another welcome return: the amazing director Adam Smith from The Eleventh Hour. Adam Smith may be the perfect Moffat director, and Matt Smith might be the perfect Moffat Doctor. Moffat would do well to keep the Smiths around. Like Matt, Adam came out of nowhere to dazzle us, and the sheer brilliance of their debut owes as much to his direction as to the acting and writing. By contrast, these last two episodes, The Beast Below and Victory of the Daleks, have been comparatively lackluster in the direction. While each of those episodes featured an incredibly detailed and well-realized setting, the framing of the shots was rather ordinary.

Here we have quite the reverse. The setting is not an intricate reconstruction of another time in Britain’s history, but a beach and a cave and not much else. And yet it works so well because it’s so eerie. Unlike Andrew Gunn, Adam Smith makes surprising choices, which adds to the tension and in general makes the whole episode more enjoyable. My favorite shot is when Matt and Karen are walking through the museum toward the camera, and it pans and rotates sideways as it does so. It really conveys a sense of mad, uncontrollable motion that suits Matt Smith’s Doctor so well. I have a feeling Adam Smith’s talent is crucial in selling the menace of the Weeping Angels. Had Moffatt chosen a lesser director, the Angels may have failed to live up to the direction of the Angels in Blink, but Adam Smith is more than up to the task.

So overall, The Time of Angels is just a damn solid episode and one of the most enjoyable pieces of Doctor Who I’ve ever seen. I can’t really say much more than that until I’ve seen the second half of the story, but at the very least this was one hell of a ride.

April 29, 2010

As I’m sure you were fully aware when you decided to pull today’s shitty little stunt, I’m stuck at LAX waiting for the first flight back to London that doesn’t pass through the middle of an exploding vol-fucking-cano, so I’ll keep this brief:

Basically, there's one thing you never put in a trail, if you're clever, if you're smart, if you value your continuing existence at the BBC, if you want to live to work another shift, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trail: Norton.

I trust I’ve made myself clear. SM.

Doctor Who: The Time of Angels

Review by Paul Kirkley

As Doctor Who is now shown in the middle of the afternoon in British Summer Time, I’m one of the millions who can’t watch the BBC’s flagship family drama because, being a family man, I’m busy doing stuff. With the family. (Honestly, they might as well put it on at midnight for all the sense it makes. Unless the BBC’s idea of “family viewing” these days involves mum, dad and the kids all crowding round an iPhone at Chessington World of Adventures).

Anyway, this week I went one better by totally bollixing up my attempt to record it (I think it’s a law that, as soon as you become a parent, you lose the ability to work the video). But that’s okay, I thought, I’ll watch it on the iPlayer, and I can record it on BBC3 tomorrow night. Except, being the ming-mong that I am, I couldn’t help but feel a fannish twinge of regret about the fact my copy would now be despoiled by that hideous BBC Three logo in the corner. Little did I know the shitstorm that was already kicking off among viewers who’d watched it on BBC One...

The BBC – never happier than when apologising for some trivial misdemeanor – spent the next few days dressed in sackcloth and ashes, rending its hair-shirt and generally mea culpa-ing to anyone who’d listen. Which some people – Iain Hepburn, formerly of this parish, among them – found a bit embarrassing. But you can’t really blame people for being annoyed by the year’s second most irritating Avatar: Aside from the fact this sort of DOGing makes the nation’s premier channel look like a cheap digital backwater – they’ll be re-branding it BeebOne next – the timing couldn’t have been worse, coming as it did at the climactic moment of – yes, let’s say it out loud – one of the greatest episodes of Doctor Who ever broadcast.

If they’d smeared Norton all over Victory of the Daleks, no-one would have cared – in fact it would have been a welcome distraction. (“Dear BBC, there I was enjoying a perfectly good Over The Rainbow trail when someone went and stuck a ridiculous scene with a Scottish robot underneath it. It totally took me out of the moment.) But here? Pah.

It was also, lest we forget, plastered over the first cliffhanger of the Moffat/Smith era - and a doozy to boot. It’s odd how, despite clocking up 46 years as the most quotable man on television, the Doctor has actually had relatively few big, grandstanding speeches to get his space teeth into. This one had obvious echoes of the Ninth Doctor’s defiant declamation at the end of Bad Wolf, but was much better because it didn’t contain the line “I’m gonna wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky!” (which always sounds like it should be said in an Brooklyn - as opposed to Salford - accent, preferably preceded by “Why I oughta…”) and because it didn’t finish by quoting Davina McCall.

Personally, I couldn’t really see the logic of showing us what the Doctor was firing the gun at in that final shot - all it achieved was to hint at how the cliffhanger will be resolved – but, that aside, it was the perfect end to the perfect 45 minutes of television.

Just look at how much Moffat packs into the Bond-riffing pre-credits sequence: From a curiously well-cast Mike Skinner dreaming in a field (and did you spot the irony of River’s hallucinogenic lippy conjuring up exactly the sort of VR world she’s destined to live out her days in?) to some delicious timey-wimey instant messaging (and it bears repeating how under-used the concept of time travel has been for a show about a time traveler) and that hilarious jump-cut to the Doctor and Amy legging it out of the museum with their stolen booty, it was ridiculously entertaining stuff.

According to Moffat, the sparkling Hepburn/Tracy routine after the titles was a last-minute rewrite job, thus joining the noble ranks of classic Doctor Who scenes – and some entire stories – hastily scribbled on fag packets and napkins in canteens and the backs of cars. And if it was impossible to see the join there, who would ever believe that those scenes on the beach were the first Matt and Karen ever filmed, even as the tide moved in on one side and the paparazzi closed in on the other? Have any other Doctor-companion combo ever nailed it so instinctively from – quite literally - day one?

In trademark Moff fashion, the playful, sitcom-tooled exchanges about River’s identity – “Are you all Mr Grumpy face today?” – segued via an effortless key change into full-on horror territory in the Ring-inspired sequence of Amy trapped with the video Angel. Our man is clearly having great fun moving through his checklist of primal fears: Having terrified children with monsters under the bed, creeping shadows and cracks in the wall, here he pulls out the ultimate Doctor Who scare: the monster that comes out of your TV. It’s such a simple, obvious thing to do – and yet no-one else in half a century has thought to do it (and no, Maureen Lipman camping it up on a Bakelite set doesn’t count).

The Time of Angels is one of those moments in Doctor Who when everyone – Matt Smith, Adam Smith, wordsmith – pulls together to remind us why, though our patience may frequently be tested by burping bins, farting Slitheens, Pinocchio androids and, yes, Graham sodding Norton, when this show is firing on all cylinders, it really is TV heaven, with wings on.

April 25, 2010

The breathtaking thing about The Time Of Angels is how adroitly it switches tone several times throughout the episode without bending the entire narrative out of shape.

The pre-titles, simulating much of the frisson of similar sequences that opened many a James Bond movie, especially those that contain huge, gimmicky stunts, are slick, dynamic and full of splendid excess. The very clever opening starts with a brilliant piece of editing, jumping from the imaginings of one of the crew of the Byzantium, lost in drugged reverie from the application of River's hallucinogenic lipstick, to his real location on the ship. We the see River make her escape, close ups on her shoes (so glad the 'shoe agenda' has made a return after Chrissie clobbered that Sontaran with a pink slingback in The Sarah Jane Adventures), close up on her sunglasses as she burns a message into the Home Box and then a bewildering leap to the Delerium Archive some 12,000 years later where the Doctor picks up the message and sets off to rescue her. Only Doctor Who could audaciously bound from one location to another in the space of minutes.

River's confronted by the suave Alistair and his henchmen in a wonderful piece of metatextual playfulness with actor Simon Dutton in tuxedo and bow tie, looking for all the world like he's stepped off the set of The Saint TV movies he made in Australia in the late 1980s. River's evacuation from the Byzantium and the rendezvous with the Doctor contains more excitement, visual spectacle and wit in its four minutes and fifty five seconds running time than the entirety of last week's Victory Of The Daleks. As River says, 'You might want to find something to hang on to' as she primps her hair and reads out the co-ordinates for her impending rescue. You could bottle this and sell it back to Barbara Broccoli.

Immediately she collapses on top of the Doctor, the tone shifts again. Alex Kingston and Matt Smith dash around the TARDIS set, she channelling the sophisticated wit of Kate Hepburn and he the sulky, petulant jitteriness of Jimmy Stewart in what feels like a restaging of The Philadelphia Story. Moffat's comic timing and repartee provides both actors with a gift and they respond with performances that balance eccentric humour, wisecracks and sentimentality. As they nag at each other there's that lovely moment where River uses the blue stabilisers and lands the ship. It's one of Moffat's reflections where he shares with fans those little things that are clearly iconic of the series and offers them back to us through the prism of the narrative itself. As Matt does his impression of the TARDIS materialisation sound effect, now denied the machine by River taking the brakes off the ship, I wonder how many of us recall trying out our own impression of that 'wheezing and groaning' as children and adults. Knowing the Doctor he'll put the brakes back on for take off because, as we all agree with him, 'they're blue boring-ers' and it wouldn't be the same without that familiar sound.

And it's the details that matter too. The playful comedy as River hangs her shoes up on the scanner screen as she spouts a load of gobbledegook and taps away at a keyboard whilst Amy, eyes popping out of her head at this amazing woman piloting the TARDIS, is just sheer joy. As much pleasure to be had as in hearing the old 1980s console sound effects too. Matt is superb as the indignant Doctor, huffy and childish, as he sarcastically counters River's need for environment checks by standing at the TARDIS door and rather smugly reels off his own assessment.

We then move to 'epic' mode with the production team pulling out the stops for the crash of the Byzantium with some impressive visual effects and gorgeous location work where director Adam Smith, in homage to David Lean, dwarfs his human figures with the sweep of their surroundings. Whilst the pretty pictures keep you agog, the screwball comedy continues and Amy and River get to bond over the Doctor's discomfort and rib him mercilessly as River clambers over the wreckage in evening dress, clutching her shoes with a handbag over her arm. The woman certainly knows how to make an entrance, I'll give her that.

When River signals a group of soldiers from the 'Church', lead by Father Octavian (Bishop, second class, 20 clerics at his command) and enquires of the Doctor about the Weeping Angels, then the tone shifts again. Amy, wonderfully oblivious to all the machismo being played out around her, goes for the jugular in her conversation with the Doctor, asking that vexed question about River Song we've all been wanting a definite answer to. Moffat and the two Smiths conspire against us with that extremely deft bit of line reading which either answers the question directly or merely confirms that he is indeed Mr. Grumpy Face today. It's back to how you interpret it for yourself.

Night falls and the episode becomes plainly what Moffat had been telling us would be his Aliens style sequel to the standalone Blink. Again, director Smith goes for those widescreen landscape shots to establish the change and the story takes on board the visual tropes and allusions to Cameron's film as well as harking back to the series own Earthshock, that game-changing story of 1983. Where Aliens was partly a metaphor about the Vietnam War, Moffat offers something quite intriguing here. This is clearly a religious war of some nature. As the Doctor pronounces to Amy, after she's now accused him of being Mr. Grumpy Face (a lovely bit from Karen) and he's catalogued his rather busy day to her, it's the 51st Century and the church has moved on.

Once the story's framework is established, our expectations are focused initially in the chilling sequence where Amy is locked in the landing craft (by whom is not revealed and remains a mystery) and watches the video tape loop of the Weeping Angel in the Byzantium's hold. Moffat has obviously been watching his Asian horror films, particularly Ringu with its own deadly videotape, its folklore about the 'monstrous' and its fetishisation of fear. The urban legend of the Weeping Angels ('don't blink'), promulgated by that equally interesting use of the familiar medium of DVD 'easter eggs' where the Tenth Doctor provides Sally Sparrow with a bluffer's guide to these quantum locked beasties, is augmented here by further extending their power in the haunted landscape of communications technology and surveillance footage.

Like the iconic image of of the monstrous Sadako in Ringu, the Weeping Angel materialises out of the video loop to kill Amy simply by virtue of her own fascinated gaze at the video image. Moffat is no longer confining these agents of fear within the video image but is allowing them to spill out into Amy's (and by extension our own) reality. Amy's gaze into the image of the Weeping Angel offers a complex weave of character, spectator and viewer all colluding to seal the fate that befalls her, where she, us and the monster all become one, the surveyor and the surveyed. Amy's curiosity and interrogating gaze replicates our own fascination with viewing the fearful and the horrific and Doctor Who's own obsession with monsters, fear and death. Ultimately, this fascination becomes the instrument of possession that then plays out as the image of the Angel burned into her retina enters her consciousness and changes the nature of the threat from the physical materialisation of the Angel to something more troubling; her loss of control and loss of humanity.

Moffat subverts that old phrase 'the eyes are the window to the soul' (various sources from Cicero to Matthew) by suggesting that images have the power to change us, possess us, enter us. Amy has been changed, even 'radicalised' by the image of the Angel. "That which holds the image of an Angel, becomes itself an Angel" doesn't merely allude to the creation of Angels but also to how the image affects the viewer, with the crackling, indistinct footage of it interestingly alluding to proselytising grainy video messages from the frontline of the jihad. She is aware she is being transformed by them, her mind altered by their cause, further emphasising the episode's subtextual interpretation of religious indoctrination via media and warfare. The conflation of religious order - the bishops and clerics in the squad - with the camouflage gear that wouldn't look out of place on the troops in The Hurt Locker - indicates a scenario caught up in the aesthetics of the 'war on terror' with an apparent 'crusade' to find the Weeping Angel in the hold of the Byzantium and destroy it.

In a similar way that Aliens itself could be seen as a metaphor for the Vietnam War, then this 'holy war' on the Weeping Angels could be seen as a possible reflection on the continuing cultural and ideological clash between the West and Islam. The Weeping Angels as a creeping, amorphous, unpredictable army (the 'difference between dormant and patient') waiting for the call to re-emerge suggests the only partly perceived and often invisible threat from the 'war on terror'. As the episode unfolds in the catacombs this threat refuses to be fully described, pinned down, filling the characters with a sense of great uncertainty. If anything, The Time Of Angels articulates some of our own fearful distraction with national security and global security.

As the Church's army, the Doctor, Amy and River attempt to get to the Angel in order to destroy it, the episode mimics the structure of Cameron's Aliens in that the technologically superior force of the soldiers (and one presumes their Western religion) is slowly reduced to desperation by the 'other', the Angels and their alternate doctrine. Moffat uses classic genre tropes, showing young soldiers gradually being compromised by the Angel, and adds a further twist to some of the ideas he developed with the data ghosts in The Silence In The Library by having the Angels possess the dead men's consciousness to use them as the voice of the enemy, broadcasting back to the
survivors about the Angel's subversive conquest. Fear, and not overt horror, is the episode's stock in trade and the sequences in the maze of the dead are beautifully shot, the darkness constantly pierced by torches with Adam Smith's cinematic framing and cutting rehearsing much of the similar hand held material present in Aliens, and articulating the episode's desire to paralyse with anxiety and dread.

There is also the question of gender here where the Angels, when fully formed, appear to be female and the story plays on the patriarchal fear of the feminine power embodied in the creatures as they hunt down the gun toting squaddies. The nature of this fear, whether it be gender based or not, is also nicely flagged up in the conversation with Bob (with Moffat knowingly transposing Sacred with Scared - also suggesting some form of divine terror perpetuated in clash between the Church's soldiers and the Angels) that underscores the series continuing fascination with fairy tales as a mechanism for coping with fear.

What's also clear is that with two parts to the story there is plenty of time to create atmosphere, develop the story and invest emotionally in the supporting characters, particularly the return of River, which was something that last week's episode singularly failed to achieve. Considering this was shot in the first block of filming, Matt Smith shows us that he was no fluke, hit the ground running with an assured performance, fulfilling his promise from day one. Kingston is splendid as River Song and is well on the way to creating one of the series most iconic characters. Karen Gillan continues to surprise with a spiky interpretation of Amy and is showcased particularly well in the chilling scene with the Angel in the tape loop. Cinematography, production design, visual effects and music all adeptly decorate the story and in director Adam Smith the producers have found a talent who seems more than capable of bringing this mix of Guillermo Del Toro and James Cameron, screwball comedy and spy-fi, spectacularly to life.

A classic in the making. So please don't drop the ball for the second part.

April 24, 2010

When the BBC often says “Viewers in Wales will get their own programme” I didn’t think it would ever apply to Doctor Who (with the exception of Torchwood). I gather that the English broadcast of The Time of Angels experienced its second ever Norton invasion with an animated version of the character (presumably the one from the tacky new ident) turning up to trail the series long advert for a musical during Matt’s final, amazing hero speech (in fact I know it did, here's the proof on YouTube). Living in Liverpool where the Welsh Freeview signal has overwhelmed Winter Hill since the switch over for some reason I was able to enjoy the cliffhanger perfectly unfettered with the exception of the usual squeeze but Twitter is apoplectic as is Gallifrey Base as is anyone else who saw this common sense malfunction. As @charltonbrooker noted, “Why don't the BBC just wipe shit all over the screen during the final scene of Dr. Who next week?” Now back to my original opening paragraph, which is a bit of an abridgement, but has some useful circular logic and an only half decent joke at the end.

From the off The Time of Angels was something special, something cinematic, something you’d expect, to paraphrase, to be "too broad and deep for the small screen". From the misdirect of what looked like a man lost in time but it turned out in reverie through to the manic slipping between time zones leading to River and the Doctor meeting for the fnargth time we were presented with what might have been the most kinetic episode teaser in quite some time which challenged the viewer to keep up with the narrative in that way that only Moffat firing on all cylinders can. We’ve only just about grasped the idea of a museum hewn into an asteroid and the concept of the Doctor keeping score before we were whisked to that doomed ship, whatever Song’s story was, space and well we’re back were this synopsis began. This is confident, muscular storytelling, perfectly executed visually, of the kind that classics are built on whilst building on classics entirely justifying the return of Professor Bernice Summ… Doctor River Song.

too broad and deep for the small screen

The rest of this first parter was indeed, as Moffat suggests in Doctor Who Magazine, Aliens to Blink’s Alien following much the same quest discovery narrative with the Doctor in the
Ripley role and are we to expect River as Carter Burke seeking to aid
in weaponising the weeping angels? Of course, it’s retrofitted with
Moffat’s fantasy features. The mission briefing is given by the dusty
poetic rambling of an apparent madman printed in some old manuscript,
the marines are clerics (perhaps a nod to the original concept for Alien 3 which was set in a monastery?), naturalistic catacombs instead of the decaying metal of LV-426’s harsh colony and Amy filling in for Bishop, I suppose, though like Kane in the first film, something is happening inside of her and with that amount of dust dropping from her lacrimal gland, some Optrex and an eye bath from Boots aren’t likely to save her. Like Aliens, it makes use of our familiarity with the monster, then adds a range of new terrors and abilities, to keep us guessing as to what else they might be capable of.

You could argue that it was the simplicity of the slow death which gave the angels their original menace and that piling on other random bedevilments lessens their impact (not least because as we watch Blink we'll be wondering why they weren't used then, why Sally Sparrow wasn't turned herself into a statue). But whilst this story too does have something to say about life and longevity, this time in the relationship between the Doctor and River, as a more straightforward thriller Moffat needed to make them a much more immediate and tangible threat. As well as (surprise!) varying their design, this reproductive method suggests something akin to the old Tenth Doctor novel The Stone Rose in which a mediocre Roman sculptor was gifted the abilities of Medusa through his hands; that Greek legend returns again here as a look in their eyes leads to much the same fate, albeit slower than in Clash of the Titans. Their new found ability to speak suggests the device employed by Moffat and Vashta Nerada though it's matter of fact appropriation of a squady/cleric is chilling.

a facsimile of the Journal of Impossible Things

Throughout the episode we’re reminded more than ever that it’s taking place in a much wider story, in a larger universe. Whereas in the previous few television series visits to other planets were rationed and always treated with some reverence, here we find a matter of fact approach to the ruins of Alfava Metraxis, archaeological aspects and the process of time travel and indeed, the Doctor and River. Perhaps surprising some, this is not their first meeting. Perhaps we’ll never be told that story. Perhaps Moffat’s ironic idea is that River’s first meeting with the Doctor is his last. Perhaps as is my suspicion there are far less meetings between the two of them and (sorry) that she’s some kind of confidence trickster and if the timelord had opened the diary after his first meeting with her he would have found hundreds of blank pages or a facsimile of the Journal of Impossible Things (“borrowed” from an archive) accounting for why she couldn’t tell that it was Tennant’s face that she gazed into during the picnic at Asgard given that she was supposed to have images of all their faces so that she could keep track.

I’ve already weirdly seen odd criticisms of Alex Kingston’s acting online and though it’s true she seemed to channelling Joan Collins in this opening few scenes but Kingston’s a good enough actress for me to think that it’s a feature rather than a malfunction. This is supposed to be a much younger woman than the version we’ve already met and she’s no doubt keen to delineate the two. There’s a casual ease with which she speaks to the Doctor and confidence trick or not this is the kind of larger than life character which lends itself a certain comic book portrayal. It’s a challenging role; we’re effectively watching a prequel wrapped in a sequel and though it’s not unknown for actors to be called upon to play younger versions of themselves (see the entire mad cast of Lost) it’s fairly unusual to do so in these circumstances with so much brain-jangling wibbly wobbly timey wimey...stuff.

a sort of walking Gallifrey Base

The companion triangle was handled – well – though clearly Moffat had to steal himself from concentrating on the dialogue between the two Doctors and giving Karen something to do. Moffat being Moffat, he’s well aware of the how fans viewed the previous episodes, and in this celebratory death match between two of his previous best loved characters and monsters he effectively turns Pond into a sort of walking Gallifrey Base, voicing our ideas of who River Song is and how to beat a weeping angel. And so there she is pointing out the possible Audrey Niffenegger intertextuality (albeit without an on the nose namecheck) ribbing the Doctor about his future whoopee making and winking away at the onslaught from the simulated statuary. In an episode which relies so much on past glories, Amy fulfils the traditional companion role of being an exposition conduit for the casual viewer, but through the sparky dialogue and Karen’s perfectly pitched confident performance you simply don’t notice it until you have to sit down and put it into words and sentences like these.

Amazing considering that due to the vagaries of television production these were the first couple of episodes filmed; if the scenes on the beach are so familiar it’s because in still form, they were our first images of Matt and Amy and the new TARDIS and the spoiler of River’s return. How we commented on this Matt Smith bloke looked with his bow tie, his stance and hands evoking Troughton (a premonition born out by his love affair with Tomb of the Cybermen), the set-up screaming classic Who. If we didn’t know this, if every aspect of the production wasn’t under this scrutiny, we might imagine that over the past few weeks we’d been watching an actor developing into his role but in fact it was all here already fully formed, the humour, the petulance, the unpredictable line readings, the chemistry with Karen. When he re-greets River we see the implications in his eyes, it’s as though Tenth is still in there somewhere looking out and remembering her fate and knowing that for all the history of his future she has literally in her hand, he sees her final end each time he looks at her but mustn’t offer any spoilers.

the past four hours and eight paragraphs

The problem is, in the future, even when everyone has watched the blu-ray release a couple of dozen times, diddy Norton will be one of the reasons people remember this broadcast of the episode with is an utter tragedy because it was fairly bloody fantastic. I’ve tried to spend the past four hours and eight paragraphs not looking for some deeper meaning, because until the results of next week’s poll are in, sorry, we’ve seen next week’s episode (the election is getting to me) with all of its Moffatty twists and turns, as ever its impossible to really say what this story is about. Silence in the Library was good, but it was Forest in the Library which made it special and though it’s certainly true that across new aand classic Who if a story is rubbish to begin with its rare to see a massive increase in quality and vice versa, The Space Museum also starts well in a museum (obviously) and look what happened there. We fans don’t forget.